The invention relates generally to systems and methods for analyzing user data, and more particularly to a privacy preserving method for summarizing user data.
Organizations, both public and private, have access to substantial amounts of electronically stored data about users. This data is often sensitive and must be kept secure to protect the privacy of the user. However, despite the best efforts of many organizations, data is regularly lost or stolen. Even when it is kept secure, it can be subpoenaed in both criminal and civil cases. And there is an increasing threat that intelligence organizations will undertake “fishing expeditions” where they monitor user data for suspicious activity, without probable cause. Due to the many laws governing the protection of personal identification information and additional security required, vendors do not wish to capture and store such information when not required. All of these threats to privacy have the potential to make users uncomfortable sharing or storing data.
At the same time threats to privacy are becoming an increasing concern, the potential to leverage user data has never been greater. User data is valuable for applications as diverse as engineering, medicine and advertising. One common type of analysis that is done on user data involves finding the number of users with a particular combination of attributes, on a summary basis. For instance, an advertising company may want to know how many users saw an ad and took a particular action online. Or a health maintenance organization (HMO) may want to know how many patients who took a particular drug also had elevated liver enzyme levels.
What is needed is a method for summarizing user data that preserves privacy.